God Bless America Tutorial. Another Pinterest Success!

God Bless America Tutorial

Another pinterest copy! I saw the tutorial for this from pinterest and I new it would be a perfect addition to my red,white and blue summer mantle! Here is the finished product, I really like how it turned out. 

To make this I made a run to Jo-Ann Fabrics (Hobby lobby was closed because it was Sunday). It turned out to be great because everything I bought was on sale! The tutorial I was following used 12x12 canvas, but due to the size of the letters I had, I needed a slightly larger canvas.  So I bought an 11x14 canvas, a pack of letters, and the dual star. I already had white spray paint, acrylic paint, and glue. 

 This is what it looked like just laid out on the canvas with a coat of white. I wasn't a huge fan of the font, but it was the best they had and MUCH cheaper than buying the individual letters that I wanted. However, in the end I really liked the font. The "o" had to be altered, for some reason it just looked too much like a "q" so I gave it to DH to alter. He did a great job!

 So then I went to experiment with paint colors and this is what I had. I really like the look of the cerulean blue, but ultimately had to go with the more royal blue, cause it is more traditional.

Here is the final product on my mantel. If I were to do this again, I'd skip the all white step. The person who did the original tutorial was looking for the all white look and added the color as an afterthought. I, on the other hand, knew I was going to paint it, but just kept barreling down that path. Although by doing it the way I did, most of the sides of the letters and star are white, not colored. I'd also probably use spray paint--it is so much faster than paint brushes! 

Here is the whole mantle.

 A close up of the metal star and decoration.  

 Finally, here is are the apothecary jars. One is with the beans and the other filled with baseballs. The furthest one is still empty, only decorated with a bow, but the America heart covers most of it.

St. Patrick's Day

Below is my mantle for St. Patrick's Day. Like all of my mantles it will be a continual work in progress changing and growing every year. First this is the whole mantle. You can see that I have a shamrock "wreath"  hanging in the middle and candles and garlands for decoration.

This is a close-up of the candles.  One is just a plain white candle, the other two are covered in scrapbook paper. The middle one is kelly green with white shamrocks on it. The right one is green sparkly paper with a green glitter shamrock sticker on it. Note the gold ribbon and green and gold garland.

This next photo is a close up of the left hand side of the mantle. On the far left is a glass container filled with a white and green garland, then some white candles, one has a shamrock sticker and another has some gold ribbon around it. Finally, on the far right of the picture is a little pot of gold with some gold coins in it.

The other area that I decorate is on the other side of the living room. We have a small buffet table which houses our wedding photo and usually some decorative flowers. For St. Patrick's day I've got green and white carnations (dollar tree!) with some gold ribbon. 

Valentine's Day Mantle

This is my valentine's mantle. It is looking a little weak, but after the holiday I picked up some stuff so next year it should be MUCH better. 

Here is a close up of the plate, which I got at Target, and some of the candles. I cut out a heart from some construction paper to add a little pizaazz. The other white candle has some ribbon tied to it.

The other side of the mantle shown below has the candles on the candlestick; one white, one hot pink and one red. It also shows that I covered (rather poorly) one of the candles with some scrapbook paper. Actually, it's two pieces of paper, but it's hard to see here. The first one is pink with lots of little hearts. The second is a see through page with pink hearts which you can see. Since this was just a prototype and I didn't actually make the final version it is just held together with a purple rubber band. 

Finally here are a couple of shots of things I am kicking myself for NOT getting. This is really my MO, I take pictures of stuff and then sit on it. Well I sat on these for too long and now they are no where to be seen. Maybe Target will have them next year...

4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone!

I hope you all have a fantastic day celebrating our independence. I am doubly celebrating because I have made my first thing off of pinterest! Remember how DH let me buy some apothecary jars? Well I finally copied some of the things I'd been seeing on pinterest (like this) and filled one of them up with red, white, and blue (ish) beans!

There it is in all it's glory. I filled it up with 4 pounds of great northern beans, 4 pounds of small red beans and 1.5 pounds of black beans. Who would have thought that it would take nearly 10 pounds of beans!  Well after filling it up DH asked me what I was going to do with the other jars. He quickly offered baseballs. I had been thinking of decorative balls similar to what makoodle did (see above). However his baseball idea was perfect and very 'us'. Remind me to tell you the impact baseball has had in our relationship!

Unfortunately we didn't have enough baseballs immediately, but I think we'll get some more. The additional baseballs and some ribbon to tie around the small spot will finish this off very nicely. Now I just need an idea on what to fill the 3rd jar up with!

Enjoy the 4th!